Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a liquid crystal display.
Description of the Related Art
As one of the most widely used flat panel displays at present, a liquid crystal display (LCD) includes two display panels on which field generating electrodes such as a pixel electrode and a common electrode are formed, and a liquid crystal layer interposed between the two display panels. The LCD displays an image by generating an electric field on a liquid crystal layer by applying a voltage to the field generating electrodes, determining alignment directions of liquid crystal molecules of the liquid crystal layer by the generated field, and controlling polarization of incident light.
The LCD includes switching elements (e.g., thin film transistors) coupled to each pixel electrode, and a plurality of signal lines such as gate and data lines that control the switching elements to apply a voltage to the pixel electrode.
Among the LCDs, a vertically aligned mode LCD, in which liquid crystal molecules are aligned so that their long axes are perpendicular to the upper and lower panels while no electric field is applied, has been in the limelight because its contrast ratio is high and a wide reference viewing angle is easily implemented.
Herein, the reference viewing angle refers to a viewing angle at which a contrast ratio is 1:10 or a luminance inversion limit angle between grays.
For such a mode LCD, in order to make side visibility close to front visibility, a method has been proposed in which one pixel is divided into two subpixels having different transmittance by applying different voltages to the two subpixels.
However, when the side visibility becomes similar to the front visibility by dividing one pixel into two subpixels having different transmittance, luminance is increased at a low grayscale or a high grayscale and thus gray expression at the lateral sides is difficult, thereby deteriorating picture quality.
In addition, when one pixel is divided into two subpixels, transmittance decreases because of an interval between the two subpixels.
The above information disclosed in this Background section is only for enhancement of understanding of the background of the invention and therefore it may contain information that does not form the prior art that is already known in this country to a person of ordinary skill in the art.